Faerie Dust
by DreamSmith AJK
Summary: When Buffy came back from the dead the second time she just wasn't the same. Dawn decides to use magic to fix her yeah, because that *never* goes wrong . Buffy/Dawn Pairing
1. Everything that isn't nailed down

Title: Faerie Dust

Author: DreamSmith

Rating: M

Pairing: Buffy/Dawn (GASP! Ack! Run away, run awaaaaaaaay!!!)

Disclaimer: The Whedonverse and all characters and situations thereof are property of Whedon, and probably several corporations as well. Only the plot/actual words here are mine, and I make no profit, claim no royalties, sacrifice no goats, blah, blah, blah….

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Author's Note: Okay, now for something a little different (for me, at least).  
I know Buffy/Dawn isn't everybody's thing; it isn't necessarily *my* thing; it's just a story idea that occured to me in response to a challenge... so I'm writing it. And hey, in this story Dawn is sixteen, which is where Buffy was in Season One (and all of Season Two prior to 'Surprise/Innocence'), so cut the girl a little slack. At least her illicit romance will be with a living person... and within her generation.  
Remember, all the fictional incest that follows is between fictional characters who are of the legal age of consent. Also? They're fictional.  
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**Chapter One: ****'Everything that isn't nailed down'**

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Once upon a time, high atop a teetering tower made of junk, the world came to an end.  
Or, well, maybe not the _entire_ world, just the only part of it that mattered.  
A beautiful girl named Buffy jumped from that tower.  
She leapt, without hesitation, into the seething energy of a dimensional rift, and sealed the bleeding wound in the many universes before it could destroy all reality.  
It killed her. And in that moment the world ended.

* * * * *

"Here we go, right through here."

It was so strange, guiding Buffy down the hall like she didn't even know the way to her own bedroom. Strange, and at the moment, necessary. It wasn't so much that her sister didn't remember things like which door led to which room, it was more like she didn't _trust_ those memories... or anything else.

Dawn used her foot to sweep Buffy's dirty clothes out of the way so the girl wouldn't have to step on them; the very, _very_ dirty clothes that she'd taken off her sister earlier. It had been a nice outfit once, though now she planned to throw it in the garbage as soon as possible. It was, you know, sort of doubtful that Buffy would want to wear the clothes she'd been buried in ever again, even if they could somehow manage to get all the mud stains out. Stains that had come from having to dig her way up out of her own grave.

Buffy was standing, motionless, staring down at her funeral clothes with haunted eyes. Carefully, as if the Slayer were made of spun glass, Dawn took her by the shoulders and walked her through the doorway and over to the bed. She didn't turn on the light; she'd seen how the girl flinched away from anything bright.

"See?" She asked her sister quietly. Loud sounds seemed to hurt Buffy too, so she kept her voice as soft and reassuring as she could. "Your bed, just the same as it was, still waiting for you." Hoping she wouldn't have to explain why the Buffybot's recharging unit was sitting beside the nightstand, Dawn eased the tiny woman down until she was lying atop the sheets. When that was done she pulled the blanket up and tucked it in around her sister, and all the while, Buffy stared up at her.

That stare made the younger girl's heart ache. It wasn't a happy look, it wasn't a _sad_ look. It was....

She didn't really know what it was, but it wasn't anything she'd ever seen in Buffy's eyes before. It made her a little scared, and at the same time it made her want to sit down and cry.

"Buffy... are you okay?"

No answer, just that stare. Dawn forced a smile, though it came out very small and trembly. She reached out and touched the girl's hair, lightly, and tried not to notice how her sister tensed, and pulled away slightly.

"Get some sleep, then," Dawn whispered. "You'll feel better in the morning."

Long seconds passed, and then, after a visible struggle, Buffy forced herself to speak.

"...I'm tired," she said, the words barely audible.

That was it. That was all she had to offer. Dawn smiled again, nodded as if it had been a gushing declaration of happiness and joy at being back among the living; reunited with all the family she had left, and then stepped back.

"Okay then. Goodnight." She retreated to the door, stepped through and started to close it, then paused.

"I love you, Buffy. And I'm glad you're home."

Nothing. She saw those eyes watching her; green, and beautiful and empty, and there was nothing else. She closed the door, and picked up the muddy clothes, and headed downstairs to throw them away. Then she went to her room and cried.

* * * * *

Dawn's world ended, when Buffy died. In the days that followed, the one hundred and forty-eight nightmarish, agonizing, empty days that came after, she had plenty of time to fully grasp what she'd lost. Her sister, yes, though that was only the most obvious loss. As much as she'd loved Joyce, the woman had never truly been her mother.

Buffy was her mother. She was the center of everything in Dawn's life. And she'd been dead for one hundred and forty-eight days.

* * * * *

"Whatcha doin'?"

Dawn did her best to keep her voice light, and carefree, and oh-so-casually interested, despite the uneasy tension that gripped her every hour of every day. It shouldn't have been this way--if there was any kind of justice in the universe it _wouldn't_ have been this way... only it was. She had her sister back; her wildest hope and dream had come true, and it was very nearly more painful than if Buffy had never come back at all.

"Buffy? Hey, how're you doing over there?"

Like now, for example. Dawn looked at the older girl's back, where she stood at the kitchen counter. She'd apparently been making herself a sandwich or something, though now she was standing motionless as a statue. That was something that happened to her a lot, since she'd come back from the grave. She would be doing something, or talking, and then she would just stop, like a wind-up toy whose spring had run down. It woke a sort of quiet horror in Dawn to see her like that; it made her wonder if maybe her sister hadn't managed to make it all the way back from wherever she'd been, from whatever hell had claimed her after she'd sacrificed herself in place of a little sister who wasn't even really her sister

"Getting some food, huh?" That got no response at all. The Buffy-shaped object before her remained immobile and unaware. "Well," she chirped, forcing herself to be as cheerful a lil' Dawnie as she knew how to be, and walking up behind the other girl. "I hope you're making enough for both of us, otherwise I'm going to show you all the kung-fu moves I learned from 'The Matrix', and take away--"

She broke off with a gasp, when she reached the counter and saw what covered it.

Blood.

A wide puddle of blood, which covered the slices of bread and cheese there, and went on to spill over the edge and down onto the floor. Buffy was just standing there, looking down at the knife she held, and at the deep gash in her finger. Her eyes held only the tiniest trace of interest, and not the least bit of concern.

"Buffy!" Dawn grabbed at her hand, checking the wound and trying not to step in the blood that was spattered around their feet. The wound had been deep; a sharp knife, backed by a Slayer's strength, meant that even a small slip could half-sever a finger. This had nearly done that--the girl would never have bled so much otherwise. Fortunately the bleeding had nearly stopped all by itself... while Buffy had stood there, and watched, and done nothing.

Dawn pulled her sister back from the counter, grabbing a dishtowel and wrapping it tightly around the girl's hand. Even now Buffy never reacted, never looked at her, she just stared at the bright crimson that covered her partially-completed sandwich like some grotesque new brand of ketchup.

"Buffy, what's the _matter_ with you?!" At some point all the quiet understanding and waiting for the older girl to find her balance in her own time had to stop, and Dawn was pretty much at that point right now. "What did you _do_ to yourself?"

It came out louder than she'd meant, and with an edge of that strident, whining tone that everyone who knew her agreed was her worst trait. At least it finally got Buffy's attention, and she turned her head and met Dawn's gaze.

"I...." She stopped, thought about it, looked over at the counter, and then back at the younger girl. "I remembered liking... cheese? And I was getting some. Cheese." She shrugged then, and her wounded hand twitched slightly. "And then there was blood."

Looking around at the horrific scene, Dawn couldn't argue _that_.

"I can see the blood. Why didn't you do anything?"

Buffy frowned, just a little.

"Do?"

Dawn was very close to uttering her most piercing, whiny, nails-on-a-chalkboard shriek, and she didn't even think that would be enough to get through to the girl before her.

"Yes, _do_! You know, like maybe wrapping up a cut instead of standing here _staring_ at it while you bleed to death!" Buffy looked at her, and then down at her hand.

"It stopped."

Giving her sister an angry, frightened look, Dawn pulled the towel off, and saw that yes, the bleeding had indeed stopped.

"Sure, after you lost like, a quart of blood it stopped." She paused, took a deep breath, and went on in a slightly less-shrill tone. "Buffy, why didn't you say anything?" If Dawn had suffered a wound like the one the other girl had received, the scream would have been audible blocks away. "I mean... didn't it hurt? A _lot_?"

All that got her was that faintly terrifying, empty jade stare.

"It hurt," Buffy said, into the silence of the room. "Everything here hurts. What difference does a cut on my finger make?"

* * * * *

It all came down to blood.

When the monks had started their little 'project', they had nothing except a ball of energy that had been around since the beginning of the universe. It was a powerful, utterly inhuman thing, and they needed to give it human form. To do that, they'd used a tiny bit of blood, of Buffy's blood. Dawn had no idea how they'd gotten it (though it probably hadn't been hard; the Slayer had left plenty of it scattered around Sunnydale these last few years). Once they had it, they'd used it to shape the mystical artifact that was the Key. A little tweak here and there had prevented her from turning out as an identical twin--even the huge memory-altering spell that came next would have been hard-pressed to deal with the ramifications of that. Even so, the connection between the two girls was like that of twins in many ways. It _had_ to be a close bond, because it was the only way Dawn could have survived her transformation.

The Key, after all, was an object, a thing. It was not, nor had it ever been, alive. There was no consciousness there, no will to live, and most importantly, there was no soul. All of those things she got from her bond with Buffy. That was why she thought of the girl as her mother, because it was the Slayer who had sustained her very existence until she was strong enough to survive on her own.

The monks had filled in the blank slate of her memory, but it was Buffy who had, all unknowing, given her everything else.

* * * * *

"--special on the healing crystals today! Thirty percent off of any rose quartz with a purchase of fifty dollars or more; what a bargain that is, you lucky shopper you!"

Anya's spiel was much less engaging after the twentieth repetition or so, and Dawn was seriously considering using some wax from the 'genuine voodoo candles' to plug up her ears so she wouldn't have to listen any more. Xander, Willow and Tara seemed to have a higher tolerance; or maybe it was just that they had interesting things to discuss, which served to block the sound of the woman's relentless shilling of her store's products.

"Great work, killing that demon hitchhiker thing, Buff," Xander was saying. "And might I say, it's nice to see you've still got those Slayer moves; miss evil ghosty from the great beyond never had a chance once the Buffinator got all medieval on her butt!"

Buffy nodded, and smiled obediently, though it seemed that Dawn was the only one who saw how hollow that smile really was.

"Yeah, you were amazing," added Willow. "With that nasty little, um, 'side effect' out of the way, that pretty much makes the spell we used to bring you back a done deal." She reached out and patted the Slayer on the hand reassuringly. "No need to worry about anything ever canceling it, or reversing it now; without something like that demon throwing things out of whack, it's basically as solid as any other part of the framework that makes up the mystical structure of the multiverse. Plus, with the countercurrent entropy effect you get with really high-order spells, the more time that passes the stronger it'll get! And there's even all sorts of... other... things...."

She had noticed that everyone's eyes were glazing over, and so she cut her enthusiastic rambling short, though not without a disgruntled sigh.

"Sure, be that way. Just let ol' Willow worry about how all this magic works, no need to bother understanding any of it yourselves."

Xander grinned as he picked up his foam cup of steaming coffee.

"Hey, Wil; I basically got through all of high school by letting you be the one who understood everything. All I needed to know was where to find you, so I could copy your stuff before class."

Tara leaned over, and kissed the redheaded girl on the cheek softly.

"It's a good thing you're smart enough for all the rest of us," she told Willow. "Without you, we never would have been able to do the resurrection spell. We wouldn't have gotten Buffy back."

Willow all but glowed with the praise, and again, only Dawn, sitting at a smaller table off to the side with her algebra homework, seemed to notice that Buffy wasn't quite as pleased as everyone else. The blonde girl didn't smile at the witch; she stared at her, with eyes darkened by something that looked a lot like sullen anger. A moment later the expression was wiped away, and Buffy made some breezy comment about Willow's genius apparently not extending to doing housework... and the words hardly sounded forced at all.

Not unless you were listening carefully.

Dawn frowned, the knot in her stomach making her a little queasy. Getting up to stretch her legs, she wandered around the shop, watched the occasional customer, noticed that someone had accidentally left their keys by the register while paying for their purchase... and slipped them into her pocket.

Not because she planned on stealing their car or anything, it was more that, well, taking things seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. There was such a huge, empty place in her life, the place where her sister used to be, and the version of Buffy that had come back wasn't exactly going out of her way to fill that place. So Dawn took things, and hoarded them, and hoped that if she accumulated enough random objects then sooner or later that emptiness would be filled.

So far it wasn't working. Maybe that just meant she wasn't trying hard enough.

Behind the counter was an old cardboard box of stuff that hadn't been sorted and priced yet; semi-strange, possibly magical items Giles had found at some estate sale. On top was a small book, with a green, pink and gold cover that seemed to be dusted with glitter. On impulse, Dawn took that too, casually strolling over and depositing it in her school bag.

She almost felt better after that; car keys were nothing--magic books on the other hand, were something she'd been taught to respect for as long as she could remember... though she really doubted that there was anything of actual interest in this one. Who would put something really magical in something that looked so pretty and, well... _girly_?

* * * * *

It wasn't just the one time at the Magic Shoppe that she saw that look from her sister. Whenever the others were around; Xander, Anya, Tara, and most especially Willow, Buffy was having to force herself to act like nothing was wrong. She wasn't even that _bad_ at pretending, but Dawn could see through it. She saw the anger, the way the blonde girl drew even further back from the world, whenever she was around them.

The fact that she was the only one who could see it only made Dawn more certain that it was up to her, and her alone to get through to Buffy. To bring her the rest of the way back from wherever she was living now. It wouldn't be easy, it might not even be possible; she didn't care.

After all, it was her fault that Buffy had died in the first place.

* * * * *

"How about these?" Dawn held up the strappy heels, doing an eager little bouncy dance at the same time. "Can I get them, can I please please pleeeease?"

Buffy looked, blinked, and shook her head.

"This is school shopping, as in 'clothes to wear to school'. Those are definitely _not_ school shoes."

Dawn pouted, and she knew it was a fairly close copy of Buffy's own pout because she'd practiced it for hours after she saw how well it worked in helping the older girl get her way. No luck this time, though; her sister was already wandering away down the aisle, towards the bargain racks. Dawn sighed, considered the ultra-sexy shoes, and reluctantly decided that they were too big to fit into her purse. Putting them back, she moved on.

So far, the shopping trip wasn't going well. Firstly, of course, because she wasn't happy with any of the things Buffy was letting her buy. (or, more accurately, that Buffy was buying _for_ her--same diff.)

Secondly, though, and far more importantly, it wasn't going well because the two of them weren't connecting the way Dawn had hoped they would. Seriously, given the older girl's former obsession with clothes and shoes and all things girly-girl, she'd been sure that they would find all sorts of things to talk about. As it turned out, though... not so much. Even though passing days were turning to weeks, and providing a comforting distance between her time in the grave and the present, Buffy was still struggling to find more than bits and pieces of her old self.

She rarely smiled (unless it was that horrible, false, brittle smile she put on for the scoobies), and it was only after much nagging from Dawn that she'd started paying a little attention to her appearance again. At first she'd disdained any makeup at all, which left her looking washed-out and pale, besides being extremely un-Buffylike. Now she used enough to keep from looking like a ghost, and at least took the time to brush her hair, even if she usually just tied it back and then ignored it. More sisterly prodding had convinced her to leave it long (it had, somehow grown past the middle of her back while she was... gone... and was now making a serious bid to reach her waist). She did, however, stubbornly refuse to color it, which left that potentially gorgeous mane a drab, dirty brown-blonde.

It was a far cry from the playful, flirty, sexy girl Dawn remembered. The golden, ever-changing hair, and always perfect makeup were nowhere to be seen. There were no more short skirts, no more hip-hugger jeans or pink leather pants; no heels, or jewelry, or even bright colors.

It was almost as if Buffy had forgotten she was a girl at all. After a lifetime of adoring her older sister, and (secretly, of course) regarding her as the most stylish and beautiful person in the entire world, Dawn found this grim, frumpy, somehow asexual woman almost unrecognizable.

Whatever depression or trauma Buffy was suffering from, it seemed that not even a shopping trip was going to be able cure it.

If she really wanted to find a bright side (and she really did), then at least she could tell herself that Buffy wasn't angry at her. That quiet, lingering resentment that tinged her eyes and tugged at her mouth when she was around Willow and the others wasn't there when she was with Dawn... which had to be a good thing. On the other hand, that everpresent distance, and sense of isolation, was definitely still there.

For Dawn, who despite the best efforts of Xander, and Spike, and Tara didn't really have any connection to the world at all except for her sister, being ignored by Buffy was almost physically painful.

At this point she would even settle for a yelling and screaming, clawing and hair-pulling fight with her, if only it would make the other girl see her for five minutes, instead of staring past her like this.

"Here. Take these."

She'd caught up with Buffy, in the dreaded 'Bargain Racks of Doom', and the result was even worse than she'd imagined. Dull brown slacks, light beige blouse... with huge buttons covered in more beige. Throw in a cardboard box for her to carry and she would look like a delivery person.

"No. Buffy, _no_."

All she got was another blouse shoved in her general direction, this one off-white, with long, narrow sleeves and a pocket that just screamed 'put your pocket protector and calculator here... nerd!'.

That was enough. It was more than enough, actually, and Dawn decided that there was no time like the present for that argument-slash-fight she'd been considering a few moments earlier.

"I'm thinking of getting breast implants."

A lie, that. Still, it was one practically guaranteed to provoke a response. She held her breath, waiting for the explosion, knowing it would come--heck, some random older lady two aisles over looked up in shock, and watched Buffy expectantly.

"Uh huh," Buffy murmured, flipping methodically through the hangers. "I've heard those are nice."

Dawn stared, eventually recovered, and closed her gaping mouth so abruptly her teeth clicked. The woman who'd overheard made a disgruntled sound, glared at Buffy and Dawn in turn, and moved off towards the housewares section. Refusing to give up without making a real go of it, she fired another volley.

"I started smoking while you were gone." Which wasn't a lie, exactly. She _had_ tried it, and had actually gone through almost half a pack before deciding it just wasn't for her. In the here and now, though, Buffy had finally turned her head and was looking at her; yay!

"That's a disgusting habit," she said, trying to sound like she actually cared... and not entirely succeeding. Dawn, encouraged by even a small reaction, kept going.

"No, it's not. I mean, yeah, when a guy does it, sure, disgusting. But when it's a sexy girl, it makes her look even sexier, and all... I don't know, elegant, and sophisticated... and stuff."

Buffy's faint frown grew slightly more visible, and she shook her head.

"No, it doesn't."

Dawn was caught between happiness and frustration. She was finally--_finally_--getting a reaction, yes, just not much of a reaction. Feeling a little reckless, and yes, a little desperate at this point, she decided to go for broke and break out the big guns.

"How about Faith? Can you really say that she didn't look crazy-sexy when she was smoking, with that whole dark and dangerous vibe she had?"

Buffy stared at her, and for once it wasn't a blank stare. It was a little shocked, and a little guilty, and oh-my-god she was actually blushing just the teeniest bit!

"Faith isn't any kind of role-model, Dawn."

The younger girl grinned gleefully.

"But you're not denying that you think she's totally hot."

Looking away, Buffy fumbled with a jacket marked fifty percent off.

"Faith is evil."

Dawn sat the stack of horrible clothes down on a convenient table so that she could wave her arms for emphasis.

"There's evil, and then there's wicked. Faith? Definitely wicked. I mean, come on! I _remember_, Buffy! I remember the way she looked at you, and the way you pretended not to notice until she was busy with something, and then you would totally be checking her out too!" She blew out a gusty breath in her exasperation. "Besides, Faith never did anything evil around me, except make me jealous because of all the attention she got from you. I remember how upset I was when I heard that she snuck in that kiss, when you never--"

"No," Buffy said, interrupting her. Dawn paused, a little confused, and tried to figure out what she meant.

"Huh? 'No' what?"

"No, you don't remember," her sister told her flatly. "You weren't there, Dawn. Anything you think you saw isn't real. You've never even seen Faith, not really. All those memories are lies."

If Buffy had punched her, full strength, right in the belly, it couldn't have hurt Dawn any more than those words. She stared, stunned, and the other girl stared right back. Distant. Uncaring. Unreachable. Taking a slow, quivering breath, Dawn tried to hold herself together.

"I thought I remembered having a sister," she said, hating the way her voice shook. "I thought I remembered her loving me. Guess that was a lie too."

She turned and walked away, reaching out as she passed and sweeping the awful clothes off into the floor. Buffy could have called after her; there was plenty of time for her to say she was sorry, that she hadn't meant what she'd said.

She didn't; there was nothing at all, and Dawn had to hurry her steps so that she could make it outside before she fell apart.

* * * * *

Waking up in the middle of the night, lonely and scared, wasn't a new thing for her. She'd done it the first night of her life, just over a year ago, and she'd done it a couple of hundred times since. It wasn't something that was supposed to happen; the memories she had of her supposed childhood didn't include anything like her little episodes. That only served to prove that the monks hadn't known everything. They hadn't, for example, known that somewhere, deep down inside, Dawn would remember the time before she was alive.

Eons of drifting, of floating between universes, of passing like a ghost through world after world, dimension after dimension. After all, to the Key, the barriers that divided the multiverse into separate places and times were meaningless.

Then it was trapped, caught, contained, and millennia passed with its energies confined by massively powerful spells. It was only an object of course; a self-sustaining orb of exotic mystical forces. There had been no pain inflicted by this imprisonment, and it had felt neither crushing boredom nor a burning desire to be set free.

It was only much later that Dawn relived the echoes of that time, and woke in the middle of the night, and shivered in terror as she imagined the walls of her room closing in on her, or that the door and window had disappeared, leaving her trapped.

* * * * *

"Buffy?" She knew she sounded like a frightened five-year-old; knew it, and didn't care. Dawn shuffled forward another half-step in her fuzzy slippers and pushed the door a little wider. "Buffy, are you awake? I had a, um, a nightmare. Can I...?"

She stopped there. It was asking a lot, she knew; the uncaring, ice-cold person Buffy had become wasn't likely to let her pretend little sister crawl under the blankets with her just because she'd had a bad dream. Despite herself, Dawn found herself half-wishing it was the BuffyBot lying there, and not the real Buffy. The machine might have been as fake as the Key's current form, but at least she was warm, and friendly, and perfectly willing to let a scared girl curl up next to her at night while she was recharging.

"Buffy?" No answer, though it wasn't because her sister was ignoring her. In the dim light from the hallway, she saw the Slayer's tiny form tossing and turning on the bed as Buffy struggled silently against her own nightly terrors. Hesitantly, Dawn moved forward, wondering what she should do. The overwhelming temptation was to slip into the bed, and wrap her arms around the blonde girl, and hold her until the nightmare had passed. Of course there were drawbacks to that plan... as was proven a moment later, when Buffy cried out softly, made a convulsive movement, and tore the sheets and blanket that covered her to shreds with no effort at all.

"Um, nope, not doing that," Dawn told herself. "There's less painful ways to win a free trip to the hospital, thanks." She looked around, located the shelf holding the small collection of old stuffed animals from when Buffy was a little girl, and picked one up.

"Buffy, wake up," she whispered loudly. There was no danger of waking up Tara and Willow in the next room, because they were both off visiting a new coven that had started up over in Meridian. There was some kind of full-moon festival tonight; an Esbat, or Sabbat, or Pasat... she couldn't remember exactly. So she tried calling out again, louder. "Buffy!" More tossing, turning, and a dainty, flailing fist put a not-so-dainty hole in the wall next to the bed. Dawn shrugged, leaned back, and chucked the stuffed penguin at the sleeping girl as hard as she could.

It missed, of course; it was no gender-based insult to say that Dawn threw like a girl, because she did.

Like a wussy girl, that is, not a coordinated, athletic kind of girl.

She tried again, with the fluffy little lion, missed again, and finally managed to score with a flung pig. Mr. Gordo smacked Buffy right in the nose, which made the girl jackknife upright in a scary-fast movement. Dawn gave a little squeak, dropped the stuffed bear that had been next up on the firing line, and raised both hands in surrender.

"Whoa, peace, take it easy." Buffy looked at her, then around at the animals scattered on and around the bed, then back at Dawn.

"What are you doing in here?" She was angry; angry and not bothering to hide it, though her voice was still flat and distant.

"You were having a nightmare. I mean, it _looked_ like you were, anyway, so I thought you'd rather I woke you up than let you--"

"Okay. Fine." Buffy set the stuffed toys off into the floor, one by one, in a little line. She noticed the torn covers, and the hole in the wall, but she didn't comment on either. "Thanks. Now go back to bed."

Dawn nodded, though she fidgeted in place for a minute rather than leaving.

"I...." She took a breath, let it out, took another one, and then rushed on with it. "I had a bad dream too, so maybe I would understand if you sort of, um, wanted to talk about things that are bothering you? Because that's a sisterly thing to do, don't you think? Where we talk things over and get past the bad stuff and--"

Buffy raised a hand, and pointed at the door.

"The sisterly thing is leaving your sister alone so she can sleep. So go."

Dawn went, and wondered if maybe turning all cold and numb inside, like Buffy had, would be better than feeling this way, every day, every night.

* * * * *

Spells were not Dawn's friend.

It was, in fact, sort of universally accepted among the scoobies that Dawn was not, under any circumstances, allowed to read the spellbooks, to look at the spellbooks, or even to be within arm's length of the spellbooks.

Once, she'd accidentally blown up her end of the table just by speaking some random _pig latin_ while Tara had an open book within the Dawn threat-zone. Giles had not been amused.

There was apparently something about her, above and beyond her nearly supernatural clumsiness, that just didn't mesh well with human magic. The consensus was that it had to do with her Keyness; that the energies inside her conflicted with spells, and made them go all random and stuff. That kind of left the question of how those monks had managed to contain the Key using magic; maybe that was why only an ancient order of guys who had no social lives (and therefore tons of time to do research) had been able to do it.

Anyway, there were to be no spells for Dawn, ever. Which sort of hurt her chances of becoming a Watcher, since they were supposed to be mystical experts, and part of being an expert was the ability to do at least _some_ magic.

It sucked, and it wasn't fair, and it was what it was... darn it.

And then, one night when she'd just been kicked out of Buffy's room as repayment for saving her from a nightmare, Dawn finally got around to actually looking at a small, sparkly little book she'd stolen weeks before.

* * * * *

"_Faerie_ magic?" She glanced up, worried that she might have said that too loud. When no cranky Buffy appeared at her door she sighed in relief, shifted around to sit cross-legged amidst the fluffy pillows on her bed, and regarded the little book again. "Faerie magic. Okay, so does that mean spells that let you do faerie-type things, like, um, make toadstools grow in circles, and put people to sleep for twenty years at a time, or does it mean magic that only Faeries can _do_?"

She hadn't intended to do any reading of mystical tomes just then. Instead, she'd retreated to her room, and pulled the several old shoeboxes of stolen treasure from beneath her bed, and started sorting through it. Seeing all of her loot, holding it in her hands, and examining it; it usually worked as a way of calming down and regaining her balance after something bad had happened to her. Now, tonight, she'd been in dire need of calm and balance. And then she'd seen the book, the one she'd stolen from the Magic Box. Opening it up for the first time, she'd started reading, though the swirly, rune-like lettering made it slow going. The first thing she'd seen there was the title--'A Booke of Faerie Magick'. That's what had gotten her all jumpy and excited.

"Because maybe they're spells I can actually use!" she whispered to herself. "That would be so cool... 'cause then I could do stuff, instead of just sitting around being 'ignored girl'."

Her fingers felt slippery, or dusty, somehow, so she wiped them off before flipping through the pages. Inside, she saw lots more writing, along with some small, amazingly beautiful illustrations that reminded her of the Nene Thomas posters she had hanging on her wall. The faeries in the book were similar in that they were women of ethereal beauty, with long hair, gauzy clothes, and delicate wings. Unlike Thomas' depictions, however, the beings in the book seemed a little stranger, definitely less fond of cats and butterflies, and, um... sexier? Dawn frowned, and looked closer, and saw that yes, those semi-transparent gowns and dresses really _did_ show more than a hint of what was underneath.

Blushing furiously she flipped further through the book, and saw that it did indeed seem to list dozens of different spells. None of them seemed to require exotic ingredients, either... or any ingredients at all, really. Instead, it was mostly a question of just reading through the convoluted passages written there, although she did see repeated references about being 'worthy', and 'apt for the knowledge of the Fae'. She wiped her fingers off again, because they somehow kept getting some kind of powder or dust on them, and then turned back to the earliest pages.

"Hey, here's an easy one. 'To summon faerie light'." She nodded to herself. "I'll try this one; if I mess it up, it can't do too much damage, and if I actually get a light then I'll use it to... read this book?" She stopped, and looked up, and only then realized that she hadn't turned on the light in her room when she came back in from waking Buffy. The little nightlight by her bed had been enough to see by when she was pulling out her stolen hoard, and she'd been too excited by the discovery of the book to think about needing more light. Looking down at the open tome (if something no larger than her hand could even be called a 'tome'), she saw that the pages themselves had a faint glow to them, and the writing too. Although, when she looked more closely, she noticed that the 'light' cast no shadows, and did not illuminate her hand, or anything else she held up to it.

"It's more like... my eyes are acting different? Like I'm seeing some weird stuff that isn't really light at all?" She couldn't see how that could have happened, Keyness or no Keyness. Her hands were tingling with excitement, and she ran them back and forth along her bare thighs for a moment before going back to looking at the spell. It would conjure a single 'faerie light', which from the little drawing looked to be a firefly-sized glowy thing that would zip around and go wherever she told it to go. Even if she didn't need it to read the book, that would still be pretty awesome, especially for someone like her, who was theoretically doomed to live magic-free.

"Hokay then, here goes." She licked her lips, cleared her throat, and then started to read the words quietly aloud.

* * * * *

The spell wasn't really a spell; she knew that as soon as she spoke the first word. It wasn't a string of gibberish, wasn't even a series of phrases that had been transposed into a strange, alien-sounding language.

It was a story.

Those few, brief paragraphs told the tale of what the faerie lights were; how they had been brought into being, what rules defined their existence... and why they would come when called. The reading of the story changed Dawn, as the reading of any story _ought_ to change the reader in some way. She read the words, and she gained her first, tiny sliver of understanding of these beings known as the Fae. When the story ended, and the words moving through her mind and passing between her lips faded away, she sat for a long moment, dazed, the details of what she'd read already fading....

And then light bloomed all around her.

* * * * *

"Eeep!"

Dawn very nearly jumped out of her skin when she snapped out of the trance-like state the summoning had brought on, and found herself surrounded. The description she'd read had explicitly stated that there would be one, exactly _one_ of the little light thingies when she was finished. That was false advertising to a fairly huge degree, since what surrounded her now was something like a _hundred_ of them.

Okay, so they weren't doing anything except float there, it was still kind of startling. Although.... She looked around, at the constellation of brightly glowing points slowly orbiting her, and felt a hesitant smile tugging at her lips.

"It's sort of pretty, isn't it?" They were glowing gold, and silvery, and soft shades of blue, and green, and pink... just like the dusty cover of the book. Dawn realized that she was literally tingling with excitement at having successfully performed the magic, the sensation especially intense in her hands and thighs. Grinning at the beauty of what she had made, she put both hands in her hair and pulled it back from her face as she craned her head around to watch them all swirling silently like some magical galaxy centered on her. The feel of her thick, silky hair sliding across her skin felt nice, even moreso than usual, so she combed her fingers through the long, soft mane a few more times, then settled herself to wait for the evil to make its inevitable appearance.

A brief time passed while she waited for the lights to attack her, or turn her into a statue, or teleport her away to some horrible place. Basically the usual Tuesday, Dawn's-in-trouble-again kind of thing, because by now she knew all too well how things like this worked in Sunnydale. And yet, strangely, amazingly... nothing of the sort happened. Feeling cautiously hopeful, she tried pointing towards her dresser, and a dozen or so of the lights obediently drifted in that direction, and hovered around one of her many hair brushes. She closed her eyes and thought very hard about the color green (for obvious reasons), and when she opened her eyes again it was to find every single light was glowing a rich, deep emerald.

"I am now a total, mystical badass," she announced to the room, and then broke down in a fit of giggles that were totally unbecoming of someone who was sixteen years old.

When the gigglefit had passed she looked around at the lights, and wondered why the effect had been multiplied to such a large degree.

"Could be that stupid Key thing is actually working _for_ me, for a change?" she wondered aloud. "Maybe if it messes up human magic, then there are other kinds, like this Faerie stuff, that it puts into overdrive?"

She didn't know if that was the reason, and unlike Willow, she didn't have anything like the brainpower needed to figure it out. Not that it really mattered, anyway. What mattered was that it had worked! She was so giddy now that even her head was tingling, with faint little tickles dancing along her scalp. She wiped her hands again, and looked through the book, searching for something a little more impressive than making a magical set of christmas lights.

"This? Nah, that would freak out the neighbors. Um, lemme see.... No, not that one, though it's definitely something to try at school next time I get a chance. How about.... Oh!" She sat, frozen in place, and barely noticed that all of the lights had blinked brighter at her exclamation, and drifted slightly closer as she leaned over to peer at the page.

"'A summoning with which to fill the empty heart'." She started skimming through it, silently, hardly pausing to blink, much less breathe. It was long, with pages and pages of tiny text, and she couldn't really understand it fully without reading it properly. Still, the gist of it seemed clear enough.

It would let her heal Buffy.

The summoning was all about 'driving away sorrow' and 'bringing light and love to the lonely and forsaken'; that described what Buffy needed pretty much exactly! Then a brief moment of sanity struck her, and even though she scowled at the unwelcome thought she still forced herself to put the book down, and crawl out of bed, and walk around the room while she thought it over.

"The light spell worked, only it did a lot more than it was supposed to." A glance around the room showed her the scores of lights floating serenely; completely harmless, sure, but still clear evidence that everything had not gone as planned. "Would it hurt anything, if Buffy got _too_ much healing?" She considered that, wiping her hands off on the front of the oversized tee shirt she wore to sleep in. "I don't see how; it's love, right? Nobody ever got hurt by someone loving them too much... did they?" It seemed like there might be an uncomfortable answer to that one, if she thought about it hard enough, only....

She blinked, and squinted, and noticed that concentrating actually was proving to be more difficult than usual. Not only was her vision a little odd, with beautiful little halos surrounding all the lights she'd summoned, there was also something very distracting happening. Something that had, in fact, been happening for some time without her really being aware of it. What she'd mistaken for mere excitement at her successful bit of magic was now a very pleasant tingling that was spreading through her entire body, moving up her arms, and spreading out from her thighs and scalp, too.

It didn't hurt, in no way whatsoever did it hurt; very much the opposite. It felt really, really, _really_ good. Still, she bit her lip, turned in place, and walked slowly over to her dresser. Steeling herself, she looked in the mirror, and couldn't quite hold in a gasp at what she saw.

She was glowing. Well, scattered bits of her were glowing, at least; hands, her thighs, a splotchy, uneven area across her forehead near the hairline....

Softly, and in the same pretty shades as the lights... and the same as the pages and writing in the book. She realized belatedly that there must be something on the book; she'd been feeling it without noticing it ever since she started reading. Something had gotten on her hands, and every time she touched any other part of herself, that something had transferred, and started to do... what? So far it felt nice, even if it looked strange. Leaning closer to the mirror, she saw that even her hair looked different, though instead of taking on a glow it was more like someone had dusted her long, thick tresses with a liberal dose of glitter. Thousands of tiny sparkles and gleams shone there, making the dark brown of her hair look richer, and awakening subtle highlights that hadn't been visible before.

She had to admit, reluctantly, that it looked awfully cool.

"Definitely Tuesday stuff here, Dawn," she reminded herself aloud, her voice stern. "Something weird is happening to you; this is never good. So focus!"

Closing her eyes she tried to act like a Watcher and evaluate her condition in a methodical fashion. Body? Tingly, not hurting. So far the only bad thing was the way the new sensation was starting to awaken other feelings, feelings that usually led to a quiet interlude alone in her bed.

In fact, her hands, her glowy hands, had slipped upwards without her noticing it, and were even now languidly caressing her breasts. She gave a little gasp as the incredibly fine powder, or dust, or whatever it was from the book that still covered her fingers immediately penetrated her tee shirt and got to work on one of her most sensitive areas.

Well, _two_ of them, actually.

"Stop it!" she told herself sternly, yanking her hands back down to her sides. And then she had to bite at her lower lip, and close her eyes for a moment as the sweet tingling in her chest _really_ started to kick in.

"Yeah, great," she grumbled unhappily. "That'll just make it much easier to concentrate!"

She shook her head, and tried to ignore the delicious ripples and tickles that moved through her body.

"Okay, body is mostly okay, just... revved up, as Faith would say. How 'bout my brain?"

Thinking it over, she tried to be objective. As far as she could tell, it was fine. She still knew who she was, she knew what year it was, she had no overwhelming urge to go out and start eating human flesh or anything similarly zombie-like.

"Well then. Guess my only real clue as to what's happening here is the book." She frowned at her tingly, glowy hands, and shrugged. "I've already been zapped; no sense in bein' a scaredy cat about it now."

When she moved to the bed she halfway expected to stagger and weave like a drunk person, thanks to whatever it was that had affected her. Instead she found herself perfectly in control of her movements, though it was more like drifting than walking. Her body almost seemed to float, as gently and gracefully as a bit of down, like she was doing ballet, only there was no effort involved with this at all.

Picking up the book, she saw that the colors on the cover weren't painted on, as she'd first thought. Instead they were made up of richly colored dust, like the coating on a butterfly's wing, and it rubbed off on her fingers when she trailed them over the book's cover. The tingling increased slightly, and she smiled nervously in response.

"As far as Tuesdays go, this is one of the nicer ones; so far, anyway." Tilting her head, she considered the sound of her voice, which was remarkably soft and lilting; again, without her having consciously tried to change it.

All that was left now was to decide what to do. Obviously there was something strange and magical happening here. The smart thing would be to go and wake up Buffy, and endure the usual lecture about how stupid and dangerous it was to meddle with magical things. Or, she could take the cowardly way out, and hope a few hours delay wouldn't hurt anything, and wait for Willow and Tara to get home. Hopefully they could fix whatever this was before Buffy, or Giles even knew it had happened (and she would _much_ rather endure a lecture from Willow and Tara than one from Giles).

"Or...." She thought about the third option. "I can hope this really is harmless, or mostly harmless, and go ahead, and do the spell, and heal Buffy."

Staring down at the book in her hands, she pretty much already knew which one it was going to be. Sure, a small voice in the back of her head was shouting something about not being stupid, and pointing out that in Sunnydale, messing with unknown magicks did not tend to lead to a long and happy life. If something went wrong, then Dawn could very well suffer some awful, unimaginable fate. On the other hand, if it went _right_, then, well....

"Then I'll have my sister back," she whispered. "The sister who died for me. The sister that I've loved all my life. And even if most of my life has been a lie, that part is real. I do love Buffy, more than anything."

There, that was easy. Decision made.

Settling herself in the center of the bed, she found the start of the summoning. With a voice that was clear and rich and beautiful, with the faerie lights glowing strong and bright and somehow _supportively_ all around her, she began to read.

* * * * *


	2. Was there fine print I didn't see?

An odd story, I know, but if you enjoy it then please leave at least a quick review.

Thanks!

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Once upon a time, in a small bedroom, in a small house, in a small town, a girl who was not a girl did something impossible. Reading from the book of Faerie Magick that she had found (well, _stolen_) should have come to nothing, or at least so near to nothing as to be the same thing. This because the Fae were gone from that world; they were gone from _all_ the worlds where they had once dwelled. By now, so much time had passed since their ending that not even memories of them remained, only echoes of those memories, and fragments of tales too vague to even be called myth. None of those ancient beings remained who could hear the girl's call as she read the spell, none remained who could answer. Given that, the book should have been nothing more than a useless curiosity. Only one of the Fae themselves, or one bearing some trace of their blood, could possibly have unlocked the secrets held within its pages... and that blood had faded long ago.

Unexpected, though; unforeseen and unforeseeable, was that this girl, this girl who was not _just_ a girl, would come to hold the book. That she would find it (well, _steal_ it), and try to use it. Because even though none now lived with the blood needed to unlock the powers of old, this particular girl had no need of ancient blood to do such things.

Because, as it so happened, the unlocking of things was something for which she was uniquely well-equipped.

* * * * *

Dawn didn't understand why she now found herself sinking through utter darkness and icy-cold water, but here she was. She tried to flail about with her arms and legs in an effort to reach the surface, only to discover that she no longer seemed to have either of those things. She tried to scream, and could not find her voice. For some reason drowning didn't seem to be a concern, though freezing to death was certainly on the agenda as she sank ever deeper in the icy darkness.

Only... it wasn't _completely_ dark any more. She saw, without benefit of actual eyes with which to do the seeing, tiny points of light all around her. They were cold, and pure, and unimaginably distant.

_Stars_, she realized, though she didn't understand how that could be, her being underwater and all.

And... that was to be the end of it, the end of her story, of her life. She sensed, somehow, that there wasn't a bottom to this water (though of course it wasn't water at all). She would simply sink, and sink, and then sink some more, and that would keep happening forever. The supernatural cold, which was far colder than actual water ever could be, would eventually freeze solid the very essence of what made her Dawn, and she would fall into a sleep from which there would be no awakening. There was no escaping it; her struggles gained her nothing, and she was not certain she even still had a body in which she _could_ escape.

_The worst part is, I'll be alone, forever. And Buffy will be alone too, with no one to love her, or help her through whatever's wrong with her. The others can't even see that she needs help. I was the only one, and now it's too late._

Realizing that she was tiring, that the cold was draining her strength more quickly with each moment, she searched her mind for memories of her sister. Recent memories, _real_ memories, from the last year, not the clever falsehoods that the monks had created and planted in her mind.

_Like this: the time I accidentally ran the bathtub over and there were about a zillion gallons of water in the floor, and under the cabinets, and heading out into the hall. Buffy had been on her way to the Bronze, and she stayed with me instead, and helped get it cleaned up before mom got home._

And this: that morning when mom was feeling sick, and we cooked her breakfast, and Buffy let me keep helping even after I burned the toast three times in a row, and spilled juice all over everything.

Here's where she was getting ready to go on a date with Riley, and had on that new dress, and I told her it made her look fat when really I was wishing I could look half as beautiful as her.

This is how she sat with me in the emergency room, and kept the towel pressed against the cuts on my arms, and told me over and over that I was real; that I was her sister.

Here she is making me do my homework, here she is letting me stay up late and snuggle up next to her on the couch, eating popcorn and watching old Jackie Chan movies. This is how she looked when she was mad at me for borrowing her makeup, that's how she felt in the morgue at the hospital, when she held me in her arms while we stood there beside mom's body and cried.

This is the time she was brushing my hair for me, and I almost told her how much I loved her--really loved her, not just in a sistery kind of way, but then chickened out at the last second.

Here she is, laughing at me pretending to be Snyder, and Xander pretending to be the MayorSnake, chomping on me.

This is how she looked when she fought a god, to protect me.

And this is how she looked when she died in my place, and saved us all.

Dawn held those images in her mind; held them close, and then stopped trying to resist the water dragging her down. She let go, and opened herself wide, and waited for everything to end.

_I love you, Buffy. I always have. Goodbye._

And then, instead of death, or frozen eternity, or anything else spooky and final, something _really_ odd happened instead.

* * * * *

It was old, this magic, very, very old. Before man, before demons, before the Powers and before the gods, this magic _was_. It was, in fact, very nearly as ancient as the universe, and only one concentration of mystical forces was older--the Key itself.

Upon the reading of the spell, the Key that was also a girl reached though barriers that had stood, unbreached, for long, dusty eons. Following the pathway provided by the book, it established a tenuous connection with those ancient forces. Taken aback by the depth and stillness of that sleeping power, the recently-created construct that bound the Key into human form, the mind and soul which gave it thought and emotion, briefly impeded the process. Eventually, however, the controlling consciousness ceased its struggles, and full contact was made.

Then the Key turned within the lock, and an infinite well of power was released from its stasis. A tiny portion, the most insignificant trickle of that potential energy, began to flow back along the channel that had been opened.

And for the first time in half of forever, the power of the Fae reached out to touch the mortal world.

* * * * *

Something changed.

One moment, Dawn had been sinking through icy nothingness by the cold light of distant stars, the next thing she knew, everything reversed. The not-water wasn't icy and still anymore, it was wonderfully, deliciously warm. A moment of vertigo came and went, and she found that instead of sinking, she was actually floating in place, and it was the vibrant warmth that was rising past her. Past her, and somehow _into_ her, filling every part of her with energy that felt older than time itself, and at the same time eternally young, ever-renewed and reborn, just as the world itself was reborn each day with the coming of the dawn.

The stars changed too, their pale light shifting slowly to a rich, vibrant emerald. She watched them begin to move downwards, and belatedly realized that it was she who was now rising, buoyed up by the slow, powerful upwelling of warmth from the endless depths below.

Shifting her eyeless vision upwards, she saw the interface between universes, and knew the green-edged portal there was somehow her doing. Passing through the shimmering wall, she--

---Opened her eyes, and found herself still in her room, still sitting cross-legged on her bed.

* * * * *

"Eeep!" It wasn't the most profound of statements, true, but it did sum up her feelings at that moment pretty well.

Dawn took a few deep breaths, mostly to convince herself that she was breathing air now, and not water, or magic, or whatever that cold-then-warm stuff had been. When she was reasonably sure that everything there was as it should be, she took a look around.

Still her room, check.

Still illuminated by dozens and dozens of drifting, softly glowing lights of every possible hue, check.

And the book, the little tome of faerie magic that was responsible for all this, was still sitting on her lap... not. She raised her hands, and found that the book was gone, disintegrated into a handful of glittering powder that spilled through her fingers and disappeared before reaching the sheets. It saddened her that something so old was gone now, but it had served its purpose, though not in a way that had been intended, she was certain.

Still looking at her hands, she saw that they weren't coated in that odd dust anymore either, the stuff that had had such an... interesting effect on her body, earlier. They looked normal, if slightly different than she remembered; maybe a little slimmer, more graceful? She shook her head, wondering if she were imagining the change.

_Maybe I even imagined_ all _of it_, she thought to herself. _Who's to say that I'm not completely loopy, and spending all this time lost in some hallucination or_....

No. She couldn't believe that, not when she could feel the change even now, in every particle of her body and every corner of her soul. It had happened, she _was_ different, now.

"How different?" she asked aloud, then smiled nervously as she heard the soft music that was her voice. "Hello? Testing, testing... echo!" Even when she spoke louder, it still came out sounding quite beautiful and melodic. There was a momentary temptation to try her dreaded nails-on-a-chalkboard shriek, just to see what would happen, but she managed to stifle it. Instead she leaped up from her bed and into the center of her room in a single bound, remembered too late that she much too clumsy to manage such a thing without sprawling headlong or tripping face-first into a wall--

--And was quite surprised when the movement was performed with lithe grace and no effort whatsoever. Caught between the need to frown and the urge to giggle, she bounced into the air and fluttered her feet for a moment before landing. That was practically _asking_ for a sprained ankle or bruised knee or possibly both, and still she managed it. More than that, it was easy. Her body felt incredibly light, as if her bones had been made hollow, or perhaps it was just that something as mundane as gravity no longer had an unbreakable hold on her. Without thinking, she rose up on her toes, then on one toe.

No problem. She spun in place like a jewelry box ballerina, and the giggles broke free at last. Every movement was effortless, though also possessed of a faintly dreamy, slow-motion quality. She halted her spin, and her long hair kept twirling for a moment longer, ending up wrapped around her body from shoulders to knees. That brought her up short, and she used both hands to gather up the heavy silken weight of it.

_Oooh, pretty. I mean, I've always liked having it long, but I never thought about growing it out_ this _much!_ When she dropped it, her hair cascaded down to swirl gently around her, the ends touching her legs just below mid-shin. It shimmered with thousands of tiny glints and sparkles, and was several hundred shades of something much too rich and beautiful to be called 'brown'. She played with it for a minute, fervently hoping that some equally wonderful magic would show up when it was time to wash all of it, or even brush it out. Then, belatedly, she turned and stepped up to her dresser mirror.

At first what she saw there left her feeling disappointed. She still looked like Dawn, more or less. Maybe the shape of her face was a little different; chin narrower, cheekbones nicer, nose smaller. Her eyes, which she'd always secretly considered the prettiest of any she'd ever seen, were still that wonderful mix of blue and green, though they seemed larger, and had a faintly exotic cast to them now. Small changes, though the end result was quite lovely, in a delicate, heart-shaped sort of way. Her body was likewise mostly unchanged, though she realized with a start that the dresser top was too high. Reaching experimentally for a hairbrush she'd left there, she didn't have to reach down as far as she usually did.

"Oh... my... God. I'm short!"

And she was. She'd been reasonably tall for a girl, around five foot, seven inches. Now.... Well she wasn't sure, but everything definitely looked to be a little higher up than it had been an hour ago.

"Six inches shorter, at least," she whispered unhappily, standing next to the dresser and noting how it now came up to her stomach, instead of her hip. She peered into the mirror fearfully, hoping desperately that she didn't now look like some stumpy refugee from Snow White. Fortunately, that wasn't the case at all. If anything, she was even slimmer and more willowy-looking than before, and when she gathered up the loose material of her oversized tee-shirt, it revealed a really tiny waist. Her breasts probably hadn't changed size at all, though the narrow waist served to emphasize what fullness she did have. Her hips and behind were subtle curves, her legs long (in proportion, at least) and graceful. All in all she looked gorgeous, although aside from the hair it was all a subtle sort of thing, the sort of beauty you had to look at twice before it really registered, though once you'd seen it you would never forget.

"Oh, and I'm not glowy any more," she noticed with a start. Just like on her hands, the magical, multi-hued dust from the book had vanished without a trace. She touched a fingertip to the spot on her upper arm where the ugliness of a large mole had been bothering her forever. Gone now, leaving only smooth, porcelain-perfect skin behind. Perfect... and also sparkling softly in the magical light that bathed her. Rubbing at it with her finger had no effect; it was coming from her skin itself, not from anything on the surface.

_Yikes. I look like I'm heading for a rave, and went nuts with the body glitter._

She glared at the offending sparkles, though she was not entirely displeased. It looked neat, it looked pretty, and she had a feeling that it was the least of the changes that had occurred.

One thing, however, had definitely _not_ changed, and once the distracting novelty of her new look had faded a bit, she had no choice but to face up to it--She was... excited. Sort of tingly, and twitchy, and uncomfortably flushed. Looking in the mirror she could actually see her pale face turn faintly pink with embarrassment.

"The dust might be gone, but I'm still feeling like I did when it was on me." Actually this was even worse, because it was all over, and inside her too, instead of being just where some magical sex-dust had coated her skin. She fidgeted, wondering what she should do about it. Laying down in her bed and tending to her own needs as usual seemed like the way to go. It wasn't like she could just walk down the hall, go into her sister's room and fulfill her wildest fantasy by making love... to... Buffy?

Staring at her reflection, Dawn actually saw her pupils grow huge as the realization struck.

"I _can_ do that," she whispered to the delicate beauty in the mirror. "I can, and...." Something in the back of her mind caught her attention, and she regarded it for an endless minute before nodding. "I can, and I _need_ to. Because this was all about her in the first place, and this is how I can heal her." The fact that it would also make her most cherished dream come true was purely a coincidence, really.

Dawn straightened up, pushed a wayward strand of glittering hair back over her shoulder, and then froze in an agony of indecision. Should she brush her hair? Put on makeup? She wasn't sure what was about to happen, exactly, but if she were going to seduce someone shouldn't she look her best? She reached for a tube of lip-gloss, froze again, and burst out laughing.

"Okay, am I _kidding_? She's not going to care what I look like, she's going to freak. It's going to take magic, not Maybelline, to make this happen." Then, despte what she'd just said, she plucked unhappily at the fabric of her tee-shirt nightgown. It had been big on her before; now it hung on her like a tent. So....

A thought, a look, a spill of tingling warmth from beyond the mortal world... and her unspoken desire came to be. The shirt shifted, altered, and flowed over her body. The cotton turned to gossamer, thinner and softer than silk. Long, loose sleeves, a neckline that left her shoulders bare and showed just a hint of cleavage, with a flowing skirt short enough to show off her legs all the way to mid-thigh in front, but falling in graceful swirls to her ankles in back. The color of the material shifted to a semi-sheer ivory, trimmed in an abstract pattern of blue green.

Dawn released the power, felt it grow still within her, and looked down at what she'd done.

"That... is pretty darn nifty. Maybe I really _am_ a total magical badass now!" She smiled, did a pirouette in front of the mirror, then quirked an eyebrow at herself. "Or maybe not. Guess we'll find out."

She turned gracefully, half-walked half-danced across to the door, and--

--Gave a soft yelp of pain, yanking her hand back from the doorknob. A glance showed her palm to be red, though the burn was already fading. Bending forward slightly, she peered at the round metal knob. It looked harmless enough, and she could detect no hostile or dangerous magicks around it, and yet....

A quick, cautious touch with her fingertip made her wince again.

"It's hot? Like red-hot, hot, but without the glowing red part." The wood of the door itself wasn't charred or burned where the metal touched it, so she couldn't figure out what the deal was with the burning thing. With a faint scowl she narrowed her eyes at the offending object and willed it to transform, to become the same oak as the door.

Nothing happened. She felt the power moving through her, spilling out of her towards the thing, and... nothing. Biting her lip, Dawn considered this, decided it could wait, and refocused her attention on the door itself. Immediately the wood began to warp and flow, moving out to the sides to form a heavy, ornate archway. The metal of the knob and hinges was still visible, embedded in the wood to either side, and she stuck her tongue out at them as she slipped out into the hall.

The moment she set foot out there, the nightlight at her end of the hall started to flicker, and the smoke detector up by the ceiling began to make the chirping sound it made when the battery was low. Dawn stopped short, looked from one to the other, and shook her head at the faint buzzing in her ears. It wasn't actually a sound, exactly, because it seemed to be deeper inside her head than her eardrums could possibly be. It also wasn't painful, exactly, though it wasn't a fun experience, either.

_It's definitely annoying, that's for sure. How do I make it... ah, how about this?_

She raised her hands, held them out to either side as she let the power well up inside her... then she _pushed_. The nightlight blinked off without any fuss, and the smoke detector went silent, the little red light fading as well.

* * * * *

Downstairs, the refrigerator in the kitchen quietly died. The battery-operated clock on the living room wall froze in place, and the standby light on the coffeemaker faded to nothing. In the houses next door, every light and appliance suffered the same fate, leaving a few insomniacs cursing and looking for flashlights. When even those proved to be inoperative, they resorted to candles instead. Down the street, a passing car suddenly stalled and died, and the driver was hard-pressed to keep it under control until it coasted to a stop. When she tried to restart it, the vehicle failed to respond in any way.

Everything electrical within a five-block radius ceased to function in that same instant, and the sealed boxes of electronic equipment at the foot of the local cell-phone tower exploded in a shower of sparks and half-molten circuitry.

* * * * *

Upstairs in the Summers home, Dawn nodded smugly at the now thoroughly cowed nightlight and smoke alarm.

_See? Now I can do things like that and not even mess it up. Being able to do magic is great!_ The hallway was pitch-dark for a long moment, then it brightened as the tiny faery lights drifted through the archway from her room and hovered all around. She looked at them, sighed, and looked at her palms.

_I hope that this isn't _all_ I end up being able to manage. A few pretty lights, a nice dress, and the power to zap a nightlight isn't much compared to what's running around loose in Sunnydale._ She was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that thus far she had exerted only a small fraction of her power.

_And of course it isn't actually my job to go out and fight demons or anything; that's what the Slayer is for. And speaking of Slayers, that's who all of this is for... so lets go do some magic!_

She moved down the hall, her bare feet seeming to barely touch the carpet as she padded to Buffy's door. The lights followed along, seeming to catch something of Dawn's nervous excitement as they made tiny bouncing motions, and flared brighter then dimmer, then more brightly still. She stopped in front of the door, looking around at them and waving one hand frantically.

"Shh!" she whispered, though of course the lights were completely silent. They did calm down a bit, and she turned her attention back to the door. The handle was identical to the one that had burned her hand, so she couldn't take hold of it to open it. Shaping the whole door again would work, she would just have to be careful not to wake up--

The door was yanked open just as she was reaching out to touch it with her fingers, and she gave a little shriek of surprise as she jumped. Buffy, for her part, gave her an angry, sleep-sullen stare that slowly turned tense and wary instead.

"Buffy! Hi!" Dawn put her hands behind her back, as if to hide what she'd been up to, and clasped her fingers tightly together. "Umm.... Still having trouble sleeping?"

Her sister looked first at her, then at the drifting, glowing lights, then back again.

"Dawn," she said, in a flat voice whose weariness had nothing to do with lack of sleep. "What have you done _now_?"

* * * * *

Dawn grinned nervously at her sister.

"What? 'Done'? Nothing!" Buffy's stare went from Dawn's face, to the drifting lights, then back to her face. The younger girl looked too, and her grin sort of drained away, leaving only the nervousness behind. Obviously a lie wasn't going to work, so she decided to try something crazy and tell the truth.

"Okay, okay, there might have been a _teeny_ little spell, but I did it to heal--"

"Great," Buffy grumbled, cutting her off. "I don't know what part of 'never, never, _ever_ try to do magic, Dawn' you didn't understand the first thirty times. Must be some teen rebellion thing." She rubbed at her eyes, glanced back at the digital clock on her nightstand, and frowned when she saw that it was dark. With one final, faintly-disgusted glance at the girl, she turned and walked back into her room. "I'll call Giles, and see if he can come over to take care of this. If we wait until Willow gets back from her Wicca party deal you'll probably have turned into a big blob of yogurt or something."

Dawn stood there, working to push back the familiar feeling of hopeless despair that came crashing down whenever Buffy dismissed her like that. It wasn't even that her sister was angry or upset at what Dawn had done, because she _wasn't_. The apathy in her voice, and the empty distance in her eyes made it clear that she barely cared at all. She was going through the motions of being a sister, and a Slayer, and all the rest, but she didn't seem to actually _care_ about any of it at all. She'd been like that ever since coming... back. The others thought she had gotten better, that she had at least made real progress in reconnecting with her old life.

They were wrong. Dawn saw it, even if they didn't. Buffy wasn't better at all, she was just better at hiding whatever was wrong with her.

"Stupid cell phone," Buffy said, pushing buttons on the dead device over and over. She looked up, the reflected faerie light making her green eyes look more beautiful ever... and more distant. "Did the label on that spell list any side-effects? Drowsiness, dizziness, interruption of phone service?"

The blonde smiled faintly at her own joke, and it was painful to watch her speak the words; a tape-recorder would have shown more genuine emotion.

"No, nothing like that," Dawn said, her beautiful new voice soft and earnest. "It _said_ that it could help someone with an empty heart; that it could heal them." She took a deep breath. "That's why I did it, Buffy. I cast it to heal _you_."

A long moment's silent appraisal greeted her announcement, then Buffy grimaced.

"Yeah. Right. Great, thanks a lot for that." A quick look out the window had her shaking her head in irritation, even as she leaned over to pick up her shoes. "Well, it looks like you managed to 'heal' every house on the block, and the streetlights, too." Locating her second shoe, she waved the younger girl towards the downstairs. "Go and get the car keys, will you? I'll run you over to Giles' now, and we can talk about this other stuff in the morning."

Dawn took a deep breath, held it for several long seconds, and did the hardest thing she'd done in her entire life.

"No."

Buffy stopped looking for a pair of clean sweatpants to put on in place of her pajamas and slowly turned.

"What?" Dawn put her hands at her sides, clenched them into fists, and gathered every scrap of courage she had.

"I said 'no'. We're not going to see Giles." She took one step into the bedroom, then another, and the glowing lights started slipping in behind her to take up positions around the edges of things. Buffy looked at them, a trace of concern showing on her otherwise blank face.

"Dawn... are these things possessing you or something? Are these some kind of evil, girl-possessy things you found in a jar or a crypt, or--" She broke off when Dawn stopped, face to face with her, and then the older girl showed genuine emotion for the first time in far too long. "What the-- You turned into Mini-Me!"

Dawn looked at her, realized she was actually looking _up_ at her mega-short sister, and sighed. Now that she had a good basis of comparison, she could judge her new height more accurately.

Buffy was petite; five feet one inch, maybe five one and a half on a good day. Dawn was now one or two inches shorter than _that_, and slightly built besides, which meant she was tiny.

"Guess you won't have to be jealous of me being able to reach the top shelves in the cabinets any more, huh?" She shook off the minor dismay she felt over the size issue; there were much more important things to think about. "It'll be worth it, if it helps you." Buffy started to speak, started to ask a question or deny needing help or, most likely, to dismiss the girl's words altogether _again_. Before that could happen, Dawn leaned in....

...And kissed her.

It lasted less than a second, because Buffy recovered her wits and pushed the smaller Dawn back. Putting her fingers to her lips, she stared at her younger sister and scowled deeply.

"_Definitely_ possessed. We need to get this taken care of, stat. Come on, lets get going before this gets any--" Dawn stepped forward this time, reaching out to put her arms around the other girl so she could manage a longer kiss. It didn't happen, because Buffy caught both arms at the wrist and effortlessly held them away from her. Dawn hoped, briefly, that she might have gotten some kind of super-strength from the transformation that had hit her, only... nope. She struggled to get free anyway, not to get away, but to get closer. Instinctively she knew that touch was required for her to do any healing. Besides, being this close to Buffy would have had her pulse pounding and her body aching even under normal circumstances; right now every inch of her was tingling and hyperaware of the other girl's nearness.

"I'm not going to hurt you!" Dawn half-shouted in frustration, a lilting, melodic sound even then. "Buffy, let me go. Let me go!"

She didn't want to risk using her power to _make_ her sister release her; it was still too new, and she had visions of that pretty face morphing into something shapeless and horrible. Even so, she had to do something, or this all would have been for nothing.

"Dawn, calm down. Calm down right...." The voice trailed off as the magical light in the room took on a different quality... and grew brighter. Something was reflected in Buffy's eyes, and Dawn craned her head around, struggling in that iron grip so that she could look behind her. What she saw there was a bit of a shock. Hazy swirls of light had materialized back there, sending the little lights darting to either side to make room. The masses of blue and green light started out as diffuse, shapeless blurs, but became clearer and more defined as they shrank. Dawn's back began to tingle and twitch, and she squirmed, trying to get away from whatever was happening just behind her. When she moved, however, the light moved too, back and forth as she twisted in Buffy's grip. Her sister took a step back, trying to pull her away from whever it was, and the light followed right along. Then, abruptly, it came fully into focus, and both girls stopped, frozen in place as they stared.

Wings. They were wings.

Dawn swallowed painfully, even as the discomfort in her back faded, and a new awareness took its place. She turned her head from side to side, trying to see better, and the softly-glowing appendages flexed and fluttered lightly with the effort. They weren't huge, stiff panels, like a butterfly's wings, though the mottled pattern of blue and green reminded her of those. Instead, they were actually two sets of wings, larger ones above and smaller ones below, like those of a dragonfly, only with feathery, slightly scalloped trailing edges. And the colors, which she'd already noticed. Blue and green, like her eyes, the different patches of colors seperated by lines of silvery-grey. They glowed slightly, too, like stained-glass windows by the light of a full moon.

Dawn flexed a new set of muscles experimentally, and the wings moved in response. She could feel them, too; the slightest change in air movement or pressure was exquisitely clear when it brushed against those delicate surfaces.

They were beautiful, they were real, and they were a part of her. Looking back at Buffy she did her best 'innocent kid sister' look as she smiled sheepishly.

"I look like one of those cute little figurines Anya sells at the Magic Box, don't I? Only bigger." She looked down at herself, then up at her sister. "Okay, slightly bigger."

Buffy stared at her, eyes wide.

"What _are_ you?" She looked like she wanted to pull her hands away, but didn't dare let the smaller girl go. Dawn looked back at her, as earnestly as she knew how.

"I'm still me, Buffy. I'm Dawn." An angry shake of the head was Buffy's reply, accompanied by a minor shaking of Dawn by the arms she still gripped tight.

"No, you're not. Or at least, that's not _all_ you are. Whatever's in there, whatever this is that's talking to me, you're not going to stay in that body for long. I have friends who can--" She stopped, and with a startled expression looked down. Dawn looked too, and saw that her arms, where Buffy gripped them and where the loose sleeves of her dress had fallen back, were sparkling. Sparking more than they had been earlier, that is, this was more like....

_Like the dust on the cover of the book_, she realized suddenly. This wasn't multicolored like that had been, but it was the same shimmery, ultra-fine dust or powder, and it was all over her hands and arms. In fact, where Buffy's hands gripped her wrists, it was coming off her in little cloudy swirls that were faintly visible in the light from her wings.

The Slayer finally did release her, and she looked at her hands in dismay. The fingers and palms were smeared with it, and were glowing ever-so-faintly as well. When she looked up at Dawn, the younger girl nodded in understanding.

"Tingles, huh?" She quirked a little smile. "Neat. That'll make both of our lives a little easier, I think." She reached out with one delicate hand and traced a line of dust across Buffy's cheek. "Now, like I was saying, I cast the spell to heal you. All the rest of this--" She waved at the little floating lights, the dead clock, herself, and of course the wings. "--This is all just a side-effect." Buffy pulled away as far as she could, which put her back against the closed window. Wiping her hands frantically on the legs of her pajama as she tried to process the bizarre turn events had taken.

"Why?" She managed, after a few seconds' struggle. "If that really is you in there, _why_ did you do this to yourself, Dawnie?" The faerie girl looked back at her sister, eyes tender, and spread her hands.

"Because I love you, Buffy. Because I'm _in_ love with you, and I'm not going to let you go on hurting. Not when I can help you."

She took a step forward, both hands reaching out, and it was like trying to touch a blur. Buffy was under her outstretched arm and across the entire room in one long leap. She hit the wall opposite her door in the hallway, bounced off, and was already on the stairs before Dawn even finished turning around. Lowering her hands, the girl eyed the doorway, and fluttered her wings in distress.

"Okay, this could be going better...." Even though the wings were only a foot or so wider than her outstretched arms, she still didn't look forward to negotiating the hallway or the stairs with them dragging along the walls. Then something occurred to her, and she looked over her shoulder, eyes narrowed in concentration. The wings, all glowy and delicate and beautiful, suddenly blurred again, going from solid to light to nothingness in a few seconds. When they were gone entirely, she reached over her shoulder and felt around with her hand.

_Definitely gone. Which is great, only I kind of liked them. Let me see...._ Another few seconds of focused thought, and they were back. Dawn hopped up and down, a little squeal of glee escaping in spite of her attempt to contain it. Then she stopped, serious again.

_Buffy's upset, and no matter how many times I tell her, she's not going to believe that this isn't something evil that's happened to me. So I'm just going to have to_ make _her believe it. If I can get her to hold still long enough, that is._

She held up one hand, and shook it vigorously. Sparkly dust, finer than talcum powder, shimmered in the air. A mischievous little smile tugged at her lips.

_I think maybe I can think of something to distract her. It's for her own good, after all, so I'm going to have to distract her a_ lot.

Donning her own version of Willow's famous 'resolve' face (though Willow's version usually didn't include a generous helping of gleeful lust), Dawn started for the doorway. Then she stopped short, fanned her wings meditatively, and looked down at the floor. If her wings could go all ghosty and insubstantial on command, then maybe--?

Her entire body shimmered, a faint green aura glimmered around her, and then she drifted downwards, passing through the floor like it was only a mirage. The last thing visible as her head sank through the carpeting were her sparking eyes, and her whispered 'Ready or not, here I come," floated softly through the now empty room.

* * * * *


End file.
